Rory McIlroy doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s feasible to be a successful playing captain at the Ryder Cup in the modern era, and it\u2019s why he\u2019s as intrigued as anyone to how the formation of the U.S. team will unfold.<\/p>\n
McIlroy said Wednesday he\u2019s already turned down the opportunity \u201cstraight away\u201d to serve as a future playing captain \u2013 most likely in two years\u2019 time at Adare Manor in Ireland \u2013 because he believed the dual responsibilities would be too much to handle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commitments that a captain has the week of: the extra media that the captain has to do, the extra meetings that the captains have to do with the vice captains, with the PGA of America, preparing your speech for the opening ceremony \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of things that people don\u2019t see that the captain does the week of the Ryder Cup, especially now that the Ryder Cup has become so big,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cIf you\u2019d have said it 20 years ago, I\u2019d say, yeah, it was probably possible to do. But how big of a spectacle and everything that\u2019s on the line in a Ryder Cup now, I just think it would be a very difficult position to be in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the captain isn\u2019t going to be on the course all day, so really the captain\u2019s only going to be able to play one session on Friday, one session on Saturday. Would you rather not have a player that has the flexibility to go twice if he\u2019s playing well? There\u2019s a lot of different things that go into it \u2013 and, look, it\u2019s just my opinion, but I think it would just be very difficult to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that, of course, is the complicated position that Keegan Bradley finds himself in for the Americans.<\/p>\n
McIlroy said that Bradley, who was stunningly named as the U.S. captain last summer, is \u201cdefinitely\u201d one of the 12 best American players right now. Bradley is currently No. 10 in the team standings, on the strength of his victory in June at the Travelers Championship (when McIlroy was grouped with him during the first two rounds), heading into the final week of automatic qualifying. If Bradley is on the 12-man roster, Team USA has already said it will employ a captain-by-committee approach, with the vice captains assuming more responsibilities. <\/p>\n
Earlier this week, both Patrick Cantlay and Rickie Fowler voiced their support for a potential Bradley playing captaincy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to find any or many Americans that are going to argue that he shouldn\u2019t be on the team,\u201d Fowler said.<\/p>\n
Bradley, who at No. 14 in the FedExCup standings is assured of playing next week at East Lake, will make his six captain\u2019s picks following the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why everyone is so interested and it\u2019s such a compelling case,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cI\u2019m just as interested as everyone else to see how it all plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s feasible to be a successful playing captain at the Ryder Cup in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-82423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}